I have a habit of needing a cup of tea in the afternoon. I absolutely love Yogi tea’s black chai. But it’s not convenient for me to buy and it can get pricey if I drink it every day. I’ve been pinning different spiced chai concentrate recipes the last year and ventured the last couple of weeks to try out a few of them.

The first one I tried was from my new cookbook:

I ordered this cookbook after having it in my amazon wish list for.ever for my birthday last April. I’ve made a few of the other recipes in there and honestly the jury is still out on whether I love it or not. Some recipes have been a hit and others not so much. Her chai recipe is a mix of fresh ginger, cinnamon sticks, cloves, cardamom pods, peppercorns and an orange. She sweetens it to taste with honey and then adds milk. I thought it was good, but was missing something. I tried adding some nutmeg, but even then it still wasn’t what I was looking for.

And at first cup, I wasn’t too sure about it either. But, after having my third cup of it today I think this is the winner with a few more tweaks. I left out the star anise (because I didn’t have any) and didn’t use as much fresh ginger as it called for either. I used a slice of orange, instead of the zest (mostly because I’m lazy) and I used less brown sugar than it called for too. I loved that this one was already sweetened so all I had to do when I made a cup was mix the milk and concentrate and heat it up. Overall, this trumped the first recipe. The plan is to get my hands on some anise the next time I’m at our local co-op (where I can buy just the amount of spices I need in bulk) and see how much that changes the flavor.